Fast, Sensitive, and Quantitative Point-of-Care Platform for the Assessment of Drugs of Abuse in Urine, Serum, and Whole Blood

Abstract

Drug abuse is a major public health problem in many countries in Europe and North America. Currently available platforms for drug abuse assessment are facing technical challenges of nonquantitation, inaccuracy, low throughput, incompatibility with diverse complex specimens, long assay times, and requirement of instrument and/or expertise for readout. Here, we report an integrated competitive volumetric-bar-chart chip (CV-Chip) to assay multiple drug targets at the point-of-care (POC). To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that a POC platform has been demonstrated to fully address the above-mentioned limitations. We applied this integrated CV-chip platform to assay multiple drugs in 38 patient urine and serum samples and validated the on-chip results with an LC-MS/MS method, indicating a clinical sensitivity and specificity of 0.94 and 1.00, respectively. We further demonstrated that the combination of an on-chip blood separator with the CV-Chip enabled the platform to directly assay finger-prick whole blood samples, which have always been recognized as an ideal biospecimen for POC detections. In summary, this integrated CV-Chip is able to serve as a sensitive, accurate, fast, portable, readout visible, and minimally invasive platform for drug abuse assessment.

Advances in Reagents Storage and Release in Self‐Contained Point‐of‐Care Devices

“…Microfluidics has the ability of precise manipulation of small amounts of liquid, so the integration of liquid reagents is harmonious with microfluidic devices. [15][16][17] Microcapillary can be adopted as an integrated device for loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP)-based detection of nucleic acids [18] (Figure 2A). This device composes of a microcapillary, a Flinders Technology Associates (FTA) membrane, a puncher, and a cutting mat.…”

Microfluidics‐Implemented Biochemical Assays: From the Perspective of Readout

“…In addition, it has low cost and good portability that is easy to afford for the public. The multiplexing capability of microfluidic channels also intrinsically enables this technique capable of multiplexed detection . However, efforts are still in need to simplify the fabrication for the microfluidic V‐Chip with ease, thus making possible for its large‐scale use for biosensing applications.…”

Chromogenic and Fluorogenic Probes for the Detection of Illicit Drugs

“…The first column has six tricyclic dyes (methylene blue, thionine, oxonine, pyronine, acridine orange, and proflavine), the second column is formed by the same dyes complexed with cucurbit [7]ril (CB [7]), and the third columnc ontains the dyes complexed with cucurbit [8]ril (CB [8]). The addition of GBH (in the 0.1-10 À5 m range) to the sensor array inducesr emarkable color changes in some plates due to the dethreading of CB [7] and CB [8] complexes with the dyes after coordination of the macrocycles with the drug. The colors obtained are ascribed to the different stabilityc onstants for the dye-CB complexes and tot he ability of GBH to disrupt the formed supramolecular ensembles.…”

“…Nowadays, illicit drug detection is performed mostly through chromatographic techniques, as can be seen by the large number of research articles published in this field, because of the excellent features of chromatographic techniques, which include great versatility, robustness, and sensibility . Several electrochemical, infrared, Raman spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance methods also exist for the detection of several drugs, and these techniques show excellent results in terms of selectivity and sensibility. However, they present some shortcomings such as high cost, the use of trained personnel, tedious sample pretreatment, and so on.…”

“…Nowadays, illicit drug detection is performed mostly through chromatographic techniques, as can be seen by the large number of research articles published in this field, because of the excellent features of chromatographict echniques, which include great versatility,r obustness, and sensibility. [6] Several electrochemical, [7] infrared, [8] Raman spectroscopy, [9] and magnetic resonance [1] methods also exist for the detection of several drugs, and these techniques show excellent results in terms of selectivity and sensibility.However,they presentsome shortcomings such as high cost, the use of trained personnel, tedious sample pretreatment, and so on. As an alternative to these traditional techniques, the design of molecular probesf or the undemandingc hromo-and fluorogenic detection of illicit drugs can be of importance.B oth chromogenic and fluorogenic probes provides everal advantages over other traditional analytical techniques, such as their chemical simplicity,e ase of use, rapid response suitable forr eal-time on-sited etection, easy detection to the naked eye, and so on.…”